


your sorrow for another coin

by greenapples



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapples/pseuds/greenapples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>against the chill that finds the bone/ is come from dust to dust in trade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your sorrow for another coin

His fingers were callused. Their skin hardened by labor and sword-fighting, his palms felt large and heavy and strange on her arms. Unknown.

NotArthur's notArthur's notArthur's chanted a frightened part of her. She ignored it.

Shifting under his touch, Gwen reached up to undo her gown, offering more skin for him to explore. Lancelot broke the kiss and looked at her, a question in his eyes his hopeful eagerness couldn't quite mask. She couldn't be sure what that question was -are you sure? or, what are you doing? or, worse, why?- but she knew that if he voiced it, she'd straighten her clothes, turn around and go back to her dark home to continue dwelling on the past.

So she kissed him again before he could speak, pressing up into him and hearing him sigh quietly into her mouth, all doubts going out of him.

Lancelot resumed his explorations and Gwen tried hard -again- not to think about how strangely _new_ it felt to be studied like this, how she never expected to be in this situation again, how she used to think that Arthur would be the only one to ever learn her this way.

How none of that mattered anymore because that was then and this was now.

And _now_ she really, really wanted to be known by this man in this secret way. The part of her that wasn't mourning still, was busy leaping up in sparkling joy at the chance to feel her own skin again, at the wild flutter of her stomach when Lancelot suckled on her neck, at the expectant warmth that spread in her underbelly when he reached inside her dress to -oh, so gently- cup a breast.

The part of her that had accepted Arthur's death was almost giddy with hope and a joy that was at once shameful and relieved because, yes, _she_ was alive and the world hadn't ended and maybe this time they could do something of it. Maybe this time she'd get to keep her heart and not watch it sail away from her in the bloodied hands of another man lost to her forever.

As Gwen felt him shudder under the hand she’d slipped under his shirt, she felt selfish, thinking these things, taking this from Lancelot (because it was a taking, she knew herself too well to pretend otherwise) but it just had been so long.

 _Too_ long since anyone looked beneath her reddened eyes and saw more than just Arthur's untouchable and bereaved almost-widow, too long since she'd been a woman made of flesh and blood and suffocating loneliness, and Gwen's reflection was beginning to tell her never again. But then Lancelot showed up, sword strapped to his back, calluses on his hands and eyes that strayed to her even as he spoke to someone else and Gwen's heart skipped a beat or two, then her reflection reminded her that white flowers in her hair brought out her eyes, and that her blue dress highlighted her skin, and that Arthur had been gone for years now and it was time.

It was time.

So she guided Lancelot's hands down towards her hips, gently pulled his tunic over his head, kissed his chest where she could _see_ his heart beating fast and strong, relished his sharp inhale when she pressed her naked chest to his as they laid down on his bed, basked in the goosebumps his lips brought to the skin of her thighs, blinked back treacherous tears when he pushed inside of her, held on tight tight tight to him when he kissed those tears away, gloried in her ability to make him whisper oaths she hadn't expected him to know, moaned when he grew bolder -and desperate- and reached down to that explosive place between her legs, whimpered his name in delight when her muscles tightened and her skin tingled and there were little bright spots behind her eyelids and her heart might have burst a bit for a moment there.

And then she whispered his name once again, after he'd fallen asleep with his body shielding hers from the cold and the darkness.

She whispered his name and told him -cowardly, while he couldn't hear- that she didn't love him. She didn't love him yet.

' _Yet_ ', he whispered back. 'But you might. Sometime'.

He didn't kiss Gwen's tears away this time. And for that she was grateful because this was Lancelot, and of course he knew of her loss -Arthur's warmth, the promise of restored peace and a wedding and a lifetime of cuddles, the kingdom she had no place in anymore- and wouldn't begrudge her the time she'd need to heal those wounds, wouldn't flinch at the scars they'd leave. This was a good thing.

The voice in the back of her mind still mumbling notarthur notarthur notarthur grew quiet with the knowledge that her word ( _'I will always love you, Arthur. No matter what happens, you will always have me_ ') had not been broken, that Arthur was still there, tucked inside her heart, as much a part of her as her very bones, but he wasn't the air she breathed anymore.

And this too, was a good thing.

**Author's Note:**

> for [Piper](http://www.rubberglue.tumblr.com), because it seems I really am that easy. I mean I usedtonotshipthesetwoverymuch but apparently I kind of do? in this scenario, anyway. I dunno, man, this is a bucketful of angst/hope/emotions all over the place. Whatever, this is your fault, Piper. Title taken from Jeffrey Foucault's[ 'I dream an old lover'](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx5d1wzdsMg) which is pretty much sung heartbreak and wasn't really an inspiration at all for this fic, except for the part where this line just popped into my head when the time to wring out a proper title came (original title was: the things I do for you, Piper), it fit on a somewhat visceral level for me, and on second thought I may have been thinking about the particular emotion that song evokes in me the whole time and this note is getting out of control...


End file.
